I've just started doing Kendo and at some point I need some kanji for my name.When you translate a western name into Japanese I know that it tends to turn out like a japanised version of the western name.e.g. translating my first name Marc comes out phonetically as ma-ra-cu or ma-ru-cu.

Then when translating my surname, Beaumont, it's basically a French name with specific french meanings.Good or beautiful mountain.So I was wondering about translating this in the Japanese as Shanyama.

Would this be a normal way to do it, or just keep the original western version with japanese style phonetics?

!m!

Doing that Lone Wolf thing. Without the ninja killing and revenge.

Mac Book Pro 13" Running Lion.All SGI's now in the hands of people that will use them more.

A friend of mine that lived in Japan for about 20 years, whose name is Kurt, goes by the name of カート, and yours is a very close variant on that, so your first name could be spelled as マーコ.

Translating Beaumont is a little tricky, maybe something like ビューモン?

Either way, since you don't live in Japan, and you don't have any legal documents to sign, you could call yourself the flying purple eater for all anyone would care... It might look a little funny to have a mix of katakana and kanji next to each other, but, again, it probably doesn't really make any difference in a gaijin environment.

カリシャック クリス

(Edited to correct an IME fail)

Last edited by The Keeper on Thu Sep 29, 2011 7:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think it was a matter of the background and personal preferences of the native Japanese speaker but when I worked in Japan, my colleagues dealing with gaijin would attempt a kanji translation first and then drop back to katakana second, but maybe that was just them. They would also say things like your name (in phonetically in kana) doesn't (coincidentally) mean anything in Japanese what does it mean in English? (what does Mark, Kurt, John, Peter or Fred mean ?) You would probably encounter people who deal with gaijin regularly in airports, etc attempting a kana translation first and Japanese people who happen to know French doing the kanji thing, but more likely they will just use the latin character set as is normal for English.

In the Japanese education system, you learn kana at a very young age, so at least you can read Furigana 振り仮名 (for children and illiterates), then almost abandon all kana except for 外来語 loan words and of course, "particles" in grammar. Most of school and high school is learning kanji and I've seen kana and kanji mixed all over the place including brand names. Chinese have no phonetic kana and they have fought wars and traded in the same region so there is a sort of common Asian way of things, the Japanese can be a lot Chinese-like at times, much like English, Germans and French have similarities none would admit. The Japanese will use kanji where they can. They have an education system and cultural background that has instilled this in them.

After talking with our with the guest sensei who visited our dojo this weekend he told us all that for kendoka, you should not translate your name from it;s meaning.It should be the phonetic translation for use in competitions so you can be identified.

It's pointless for me to have my name on the bottom of the zekken and then the kanji above it to say something different.Apparently according to our sensei you can get disqualified from a competition for that.

So I have to have:

ボーモントBōmonto.

I think I'll save the other one for a tattoo maybe:美しい山Utsukushii yama

!m!

Doing that Lone Wolf thing. Without the ninja killing and revenge.

Mac Book Pro 13" Running Lion.All SGI's now in the hands of people that will use them more.

My parents told me it was after the roman god mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(mythology)Jeroen is easy. it was my dad's name. But to avoid confusion between us, and people around here can't pronounce dutch names properly anyways.

Interesting. You pronounce the first syllable with \ˈbō\ rather than \ˈbyü-\? And I guess throwing the ト on the end does make it a bit more masculine, even if the "t" is practically silent... Obviously, how you prefer it to be pronounced is important...

The Keeper wrote:Interesting. You pronounce the first syllable with \ˈbō\ rather than \ˈbyü-\? And I guess throwing the ト on the end does make it a bit more masculine, even if the "t" is practically silent... Obviously, how you prefer it to be pronounced is important...

Everyone always makes the byu pronunciation error when pronouncing my surname name.It's a little tricky because there are other English names with that pronunciation, for example Beaulieu and that is pronounced 'byu lee'.But for myself, obviously being of a French origin, the beau is pronounced as the French would say it, sort of. In all honest, any time I've heard anyone French pronounce my name, they always pronounce it 'bo' with a very short o sound. My family has always pronounced it 'bow'. Then obvously I get people spelling it bowmont.

Funniest mis-spelling I got once was bowmint.

!m!

Doing that Lone Wolf thing. Without the ninja killing and revenge.

Mac Book Pro 13" Running Lion.All SGI's now in the hands of people that will use them more.